seminolewar

Did Mayans Build the Southeastern Mounds?

The past year there has been a lot of hubbub about the possibility of Mayans having built a city in southeast Georgia.As with everything, do your research.

Unfortunately the history-less channel had a program about the Mayan hypothesis, and unknowing people have taken that to heart. But the only evidence given to prove this theory, is an unusual five-sided pyramid mound, and the possibility of the name of an ancient city as the same as the name used by the Mayans. This is pretty flimsy evidence, with no other artifacts and proof given. It is the same fringe and unsupported talk from the people say that the Mississippian mound builders came from Atlantis about 100,000 years ago. I find it insulting to the people who constructed these amazing mound complexes.

North America had mound builders from Canada down to lower Central America, and there is no question about that. There are many similarities between the different cultures and people in the northern hemisphere, such as building mounds to serve a leadership or ceremonial purpose, and a type of ball game played between towns and tribes. I am sure if you studied antiquity in Europe or Asia, you would find cross-continent similarities. In most cities in Europe, you will find a cathedral in the town square; it doesn’t mean they are all the same country or civilization, but they do share similarities.

North America had its own spectacular civilization going on at the same time of the Mayans, and in some cases, there are mound sites older than the Mayan civilization. There is enough archaeological evidence to indicate that there was another civilization here in the north, proceeding or concurrent with the Mayans, but it definitely was not the Mayan. They could have communicated, but it would have been difficult over vast physical boundaries like the large Gulf of Mexico. Any archaeology student will tell you this. It is important to note that while the person purporting this hypothesis of Mayans in Georgia is probably a very good architect; and I believe that he probably is, he has no archaeology background, no anthropology background, and his claims of Muskogee Creek background are in family heredity only. He is an southern Christian, not a traditional practicing Muskogee, and is no expert on the ancient people of the southeast as far as anthropology & archaeology are concerned.

The father of modern anthropology and sociology was Bronislaw Malinowski who had made observations that that I think can apply to the mound builders. And interesting enough, 100 years after his field work, I don’t see anyone disagreeing with his findings and field work, which are apparently still holding solid. That is almost unprecedented in any field of science.

Malinowski spent years studying the people of the Pacific Islands. What he found is something I think that we can directly relate to the mound builders. He found among the Pacific Islanders was what is called the Kuna ring, a ceremonial ring that was traded hundreds of miles over islands and oceans, far from where it originated. There was not any particular person who transported the object; it was just passed on until it reached a destination far from where it started. I think that directly applies to our mound builders, which is why conch shells have been found in Oklahoma, or copper plates in Florida. If you are on foot or boat powered by your own physical labor, you would not go 1,000 miles just to take an object that has no practical or commercial value. But it would be taken over small distances if it is a ceremonial object, or souvenir.

Another thing that Malinowski found was that the further away from the point of origin you get, the more elaborate and complicated the ceremonies get. The early Christians look pretty simple and mundane in Jerusalem and the near East. But by the time they reach Rome, the church is very ornate and elaborate. Jews in Israel do not make much pageant or elaborate ceremony, except for a small minority. By the time the Jews are in Poland or Russia, their religious practices and philosophy are very elaborate and complex. So in this theory, the mound builder civilization could have gone the other way, and started in North American, and slowly made its way into Mexico and central America. The Native people here claim that they were the ones who started the mounds or pyramids, instead of it coming from Mexico.